Guild Wars 2

I find ele still very viable, just can’t 2v1 that well anymore.

OP you are completely correct. There are some people that like to pretend the class isn’t garbage, but it is. It was nerfed into the ground and then nerfed again. Don’t worry, those people who like to make wild claims and pretend they are better in this thread are known trolls and everyone already knows they can never back up any claims they make.

Agreed some of the nerfs were unneeded. RTL for example. Keeping the CD at 20s would have been fine imo.

However, despite having a low health pool, we are very SUSTAINABLE, which isn’t something every class can do.

If you think I’m crazy, look at the healing values of Evasive Arcana when you attune to water and Healing Ripple. 1302 healing with a 1.0 scaling on healing power. That means every 10 seconds you get a 2.6k heal, which scales 2.0 on healing power. WITHOUT USING A HEAL SKILL.

Yes, our autoattack damage is terrible, but we have 16 other skills to use. If you run scepter, you can blast a target with a bunch of skills all at the same time. And scepter is meant to be comboed as its burst potential is INSANE. If every Phoenix or Dragon’s Tooth landed, scepter would be overpowered.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The same phrase over and over again “having the lowest armor and heath in the game”.. It gets old to see players using this same excuse to justify why they are performing poorly with the profession. While some are complaining that the ele is awful at every aspect of the game, there are other players that are very good with this profession at every aspect of the game. What could be the difference?

Blaze, while I agree with you to some extent, the problem with the ele currently is that the difficulty of playing the class in its current form doesn’t harmonize with the payoff. Also, the maximum payoff is less than other classes can achieve, even if you are outplaying your opponent. Sure, we can do o.k. if played very well, and even beat others if we outplay them, but we in an even-skill matchup against most classes we come out on the bottom. We had found an ele spec that worked (X/D) because it gave us a means of surviving (mobility) on top of the one thing we excel at (healing), which happened to pair very well. However, after having our defensive utilities (mist-form, cleansing fire, lightning flash), healing (esp signet of restoration), and mobility nerfed we now stand at a significant disadvantage to other classes, and don’t even have the pure offense to make up for it. They nerfed so much of the defensive capability of our most defensive build (0/10/0/30/30 with 3x cantrips is about as defensive as you can get), such that our defense at max is barely on par with what most classes can get without doing anything special. That is not being the jack of all trades (which is defined as someone who is above average and capable at everything). What we are are a semi-skilled worker with a lot of handicaps.

Such workers can still get stuff done, its just a lot harder for them compared to people without disabilities. If they can give us back some our inherent defensive capabilities and little bit more offense, we might be in a better place.

Also, GoatCheese, wouldn’t it be nice if we had standard-power auto-attacks such that spamming skills wasn’t required, and they could be used at the right time. We already get balance on most skills by giving artificially high cooldowns on them. Also, the EA heal and water-swap heal are powerful, but look around and you will find that other classes have some very similar options that are nearly as powerful (e.g. shouts on warriors and elixir-infused bombs + backpack regenerator on engies, and EVERY dodge-roll on guardian doing a bit of aoe-healing with a 15-point trait just to name a few). Also, we NEED the healing as it is our only way to sustain, whereas other classes have more defensive skills/utilities built in (aegis on guardians, blocks/invulns/tankiness for warrs/engies, stealth on theif, clones+stealth on mesmer, evades+passives from rangers, etc). On other classes, most of these things are innate. We are forced to spec for it, and as such have no builds that wont include either 15 in water or 30 in arcana (most take both).

The double Ride the Lightning nerf that they implemented while completely ignoring the absurd mobility of warriors was ridiculous.

Gilburt.9146:

The double Ride the Lightning nerf that they implemented while completely ignoring the absurd mobility of warriors was ridiculous.

Haha right? I’m addicted to Sword+Horn & Greatsword.

can’t wait until this patch comes around
and there will still be “elementalists are fine” posts

I still don’t understand the stun-breaker change. Those skills were conceptually fine as they were; the problem was a lack of viability of OTHER utilities. However, nerfing something just to make an unappealing skill more appealing is a terrible way to balance. Putting the stunbreaks on skills that really have no other defensive utility is counter-intuitive and essentially forces you to waste slots just to avoid being stunned into oblivion.

FrownyClown.8402:

I find ele still very viable, just can’t 2v1 that well anymore.

It’s very tough to kill two average people because they actually rez themselves so if you dont have an access to poison and stability/immunity/stealth at the same time or cc 2nd opponent far enough from downed one, it’s possible only after consecutive downed penalty or simultaneous transition to downed state which doesn’t happen often, especially with a bunker build.

Killing and finishing one person while other is pewpewing with his shortbow doesn’t mean much.

gotta agree as i think anet overreacted and nerfed without even thinking. they could have buffed other classes first, but no they did both things at the same time. now look at our awesome meta we go in spvp. ele and mesmers both are barely played. with that terrible meta i think some of the nerfs should be looked at again.

honestly i think anet needs a new balancing team. the current team makes major mistakes:
-the necro buffs that created that terrible meta were predictable (if u actually play the game)
-the new runes were either bugged(and some still are) or overpowered (tormenting needed to be hot fixed and perplexity is still op with no icd on the 6th rune that gives every interruptclass the ability to do 25 stacks of confusion..)
-the ac buff…o.0 (i bet u money the next treb buff will create the new treb meta in wvw)

then they nerf classes at the same time while handing out pretty big buffs to other classes, without checking if buffing could actually be enough

and they still allow things like 8k backstabs, permastealth, 13k eviscerate, permastunns,……

i just feel like anet needs to either have the current balance team play the game actively and play ALL classes in spvp,pve and wvw or get a new team.

I’m willing to bet the low HP pool on eles is at least partially influenced from the old D&D mage hit dice table – where mages had the ability to do huge ranged damage but were made intentionally squishy to compensate. I don’t see any lvl 9 spells on my hotbar do you? Their current mobility and utility doesn’t qualify such low HP in my opinion either.

ghettogenius.9174:

I’m willing to bet the low HP pool on eles is at least partially influenced from the old D&D mage hit dice table – where mages had the ability to do huge ranged damage but were made intentionally squishy to compensate. I don’t see any lvl 9 spells on my hotbar do you? Their current mobility and utility doesn’t qualify such low HP in my opinion either.

Ah, Time Stop would be enough.

red.2387:

3) People understand how elementalists work now.

and this is the biggest nerf to ele.

I can still kill someone who hits me when I have shocking aura on me, a stupid thief who HS spam me while I have arcane shield and he has < 2k hp or when someone dont poison me while I am about to heal etc. .. but slowly those kind of players become a minority.
When you know how to play ele you also know how to kill him becasue again ele hp and armour is lowest in the game, skills are medicore, have long CD and are easy to avoid.
For example against wvw tanky/stun warrior a dps oriented ele has zero chances to win because even if warrior face tank whole ele "burst" he lose 10k hp (which is 1/3 of his hp pool) and heal it back with one button press. As an ele you cannot even poison him unless you use sigil. You can still interrupt his heal but probably you dont have updraft/earthquake because you already used them to asure that your "burst" hits the warrior. Now ele "burst" is on comparable CD as his heal, meanwhile warrior used only heal and maybe 1 evade. Ele will die after all of his util stunbreaks will go on CD. The second and probably final blow will be eviscatare that will take 75% of ele hp :D The good thing is that ele will have painless death because he will be stunned in the moment he die.

Lavadiel.6231:

wvw tanky/scum warrior

FTFY

LightningBlaze.4913:

The same phrase over and over again “having the lowest armor and heath in the game”.. It gets old to see players using this same excuse to justify why they are performing poorly with the profession. While some are complaining that the ele is awful at every aspect of the game, there are other players that are very good with this profession at every aspect of the game. What could be the difference?

I don’t think you can convert your wvwvw s/d build to PvP, let me know how you fare against other professions with : 5-6k HP less, 30-40% less crit dmg, 10-20% less crit chance, 300-600 less Power, 100-200 less toughness, no sharperning stones or food buffs

LightningBlaze.4913:

The same phrase over and over again “having the lowest armor and heath in the game”.. It gets old to see players using this same excuse to justify why they are performing poorly with the profession. While some are complaining that the ele is awful at every aspect of the game, there are other players that are very good with this profession at every aspect of the game. What could be the difference?

Have you tried to do soloq after it was introduced? Go try it,climb up the ladder to higher than 200,meet good and known players ,feel useless and get yelled for even thinking of bringing this crappy excuse of a class there /end
The class needs serious help in tpvp and its not my opinion mate..Nobody plays that class anymore in pvp.You might do 20 games in a row and you ll probably wont meet any ele at all ..and im not exaggerating unfortunately

He speaks truth.

3 days of tPvP shattered my will to play Ele. And I really love it. I do. But as soon as you encounter a decent warrior/ranger/necro in tPvP you will see how useless you are.

ATM i am not even tPvPing even thoug I wanted to get some ranks. BC Soloqueueing atm on an Ele if you werent decently ranked before means dropping to under 10%. You never get out of under 10%. Ever.

I get teamed with lvl 1 Rangers that use bear.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The same phrase over and over again “having the lowest armor and heath in the game”.. It gets old to see players using this same excuse to justify why they are performing poorly with the profession. While some are complaining that the ele is awful at every aspect of the game, there are other players that are very good with this profession at every aspect of the game. What could be the difference?

Being good in WvW is different than being part of a team in tpvp. The benefit of WvW is it gives you enough time to have all your skills back into action, while in tpvp you are nearly constantly fighting, but I digress.

Playing a class that most of its mechanics are actually working to undermine you might give you some self-satisfaction, but in team setting all you are is a DRAG.

Man when I think my thief (new level 80 – not ascend) can Backstab for over 9k, can spam the second skill 3 times (4k each times) to bring down the poor guy, use shadow refuge as the rest of his team arrives and finish him as they are resuscitating him without them ever seeing me, and get away without any problem while they are hitting air… When I think that I realize that THE ELE AOE, HEALING AND MOBILITY SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN NERFED. (sorry for caps… artistically intended). The developers failed with this class to acheive game balance, they should undo all of the elementalist nerfs.

you have a point sir
i was hit by 2 thieves the other day.. 22,200 damage in 2 seconds
one did hit me for 9k damage, the other 13k damage
the funny part is i was completely built for toughness, protection, vitality….
50% health gone in 2 seconds from 1 opposing enemy
what a joke

The work is not commensurate with the pay off.

Until it is I don’t see the point in playing my Ele outside of anything but Zerg WvW.

Even staff zerging, the elementalist is there to drop a static field then wait around until a water field is needed. AoE limit kills pretty much every other skill, that and the amount of time it takes for our skills to do damage. A staff necro, for example, has instant damage and conditions in a larger area (using greater marks) than most of our skills (using blasting staff).

LightningBlaze.4913:

The same phrase over and over again “having the lowest armor and heath in the game”.. It gets old to see players using this same excuse to justify why they are performing poorly with the profession.

Did you miss the part where when you lose all your health you die?

Death is bad. Life is good! okay?

Frye.4608:

LightningBlaze.4913:

The same phrase over and over again “having the lowest armor and heath in the game”.. It gets old to see players using this same excuse to justify why they are performing poorly with the profession.

Did you miss the part where when you lose all your health you die?

Death is bad. Life is good! okay?

Well said. Some people will just never get it, or admit to it.

Xillllix.3485:

Man when I think my thief (new level 80 – not ascend) can Backstab for over 9k, can spam the second skill 3 times (4k each times) to bring down the poor guy, use shadow refuge as the rest of his team arrives and finish him as they are resuscitating him without them ever seeing me, and get away without any problem while they are hitting air… When I think that I realize that THE ELE AOE, HEALING AND MOBILITY SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN NERFED. (sorry for caps… artistically intended). The developers failed with this class to acheive game balance, they should undo all of the elementalist nerfs.

I leveled my thief mostly on wvw up to level 80. Starting from level ~30 (elite and important utils unlocked) it was easier to play than full ascended 80 (over 1k h gameplay) ele. Even until now I did not bother to full ascend my thief in all builds, on the right side are still some rares and greens and my death/score ratio on thief is close to 100%. Once I get 25 bloodlust on thief I loose them during logg off on ele I am forced to collect whole 25 stack 3-5 times in one hour

LightningBlaze.4913:

The same phrase over and over again “having the lowest armor and heath in the game”.. It gets old to see players using this same excuse to justify why they are performing poorly with the profession. While some are complaining that the ele is awful at every aspect of the game, there are other players that are very good with this profession at every aspect of the game. What could be the difference?

The thing is they’re not.

The truth is with ele is that it can do a bucket list of things. Just very badly.

I don’t like the idea of having to chain combos perfectly to take a fraction of a targets health down when a thief can sit in stealth and literally bring you down to a good 10% of your health in a matter of seconds, I should feel more rewarded for getting off a good combo.

ARM.3912:

OP you are completely correct. There are some people that like to pretend the class isn’t garbage, but it is.

It’s not pretending. It’s actually sticking with the profession (classes are for people that are still learning) and improving, not trying to turn it into something else but actually make the profession work as it’s intended.

And then, eles do just fine. They’re not instagib uberkillers, but they’re no pushovers either.

Hanako.1827:

I don’t like the idea of having to chain combos perfectly to take a fraction of a targets health down

Then obviously, elese aren’t your cup of tea. The staff ele revolves around combos, it’s crippled without it. But removing them would make them very bland, imho.

Rune.4231:

A staff necro, for example, has instant damage and conditions in a larger area (using greater marks) than most of our skills (using blasting staff).

Yet they have the same 5-target cap. In fact, the only ranged nuke that bypasses the limit is, in fact, Meteor Shower.

Please Anet, if there is one change that should be reverted is bring Ride the Lightning back to 20 sec cd (keeping the 1200 range). I beg you, engis, wars, thieves,rangers all have good movements skills that don’t have a 40 sec cool down.. T__________T

Elementalists have always been an excellent profession in pvp. The only exception was for the last patch, not because we were nerfed, but because some builds were overbuffed and can counter our best builds. Once the nerfs for other professions come in, we should see play again in pvp.

Out of my head:
- D/D cleric bunker eles (countered by current thief’s boon-stealing meta)
- S/D valkyrie instant burst eles (countered by current high condition + high defense meta)
- S/D berserker dps variation (decent versus current meta with the right traits and utilities)

For pve, there’s only a single good profession. Warrior. With Guardians and Mesmers filling in a niche. This has nothing to do with balance. It’s purely the fault of pve’s content design. To make elementalists, and most other professions, more useful in pve, the encounter design needs to be improved. Still, you can always go for a Lightning Hammer build, and deal high damage while spread plenty of might and fury to your warriors.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Elementalists have always been an excellent profession in pvp. The only exception was for the last patch, not because we were nerfed, but because some builds were overbuffed and can counter our best builds. Once the nerfs for other professions come in, we should see play again in pvp.

Out of my head:
- D/D cleric bunker eles (countered by current thief’s boon-stealing meta)
- S/D valkyrie instant burst eles (countered by current high condition + high defense meta)
- S/D berserker dps variation (decent versus current meta with the right traits and utilities)

For pve, there’s only a single good profession. Warrior. With Guardians and Mesmers filling in a niche. This has nothing to do with balance. It’s purely the fault of pve’s content design. To make elementalists, and most other professions, more useful in pve, the encounter design needs to be improved. Still, you can always go for a Lightning Hammer build, and deal high damage while spread plenty of might and fury to your warriors.

PvP agree.

For PvE, typical W/G/M meta moved to more variations. Speed runners are using rangers, engineers, elementalist and they stopped using mesmers. I don’t particularly agree with everything they do but saying it’s just W/G/M is too stretched out.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The same phrase over and over again “having the lowest armor and heath in the game”.. It gets old to see players using this same excuse to justify why they are performing poorly with the profession. While some are complaining that the ele is awful at every aspect of the game, there are other players that are very good with this profession at every aspect of the game. What could be the difference?

Dude, I have looked at like 5 different ele posts and you are one of the only people still defending this class saying it isn’t garbage when it is. TBH If it is your main you won’t mind a few buffs so we can be on par with the rest of the classes in the game….

I would spend more time defending this class too, but I’ve come to realize that the people in this board won’t listen. Not that this is excluse to the elementalist’s boards. All professsion-specific boards are driven by community members who enjoy playing the victim card. Just look at most other boards, it’s the same as this one.

“Why does our profession suck while all other 7 are so awesome?” You won’t see anything else being posted here, or on the mesmer’s forums, or on the engineer’s forums, or on the ranger’s forums, or on the thieves’ forum, etc.

If you want to understand why the elementalist is a decent or a good profession, it’s better to discuss it in non-biased forums, like structured pvp forum, for example.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I would spend more time defending this class too, but I’ve come to realize that the people in this board won’t listen. Not that this is excluse to the elementalist’s boards. All professsion-specific boards are driven by community members who enjoy playing the victim card. Just look at most other boards, it’s the same as this one.

“Why does our profession suck while all other 7 are so awesome?” You won’t see anything else being posted here, or on the mesmer’s forums, or on the engineer’s forums, or on the ranger’s forums, or on the thieves’ forum, etc.

If you want to understand why the elementalist is a decent or a good profession, it’s better to discuss it in non-biased forums, like structured pvp forum, for example.

Ok then! If its just the community that likes to play the victim card explain me why ele is a good class and why is it worth it to ahve in your line up?
You assume that everything will get nerfed and ele will magically rise up again but i doubt anet will completely reverse necro buffs ,warrior buffs and destroy spirit rangers.
Then tell me what skill is bringing ele to the team??With countless useless utilities and elites?
Or give me a reason why ele bunker is good support or good at anything now that it cant push far point and ranger is better at close?
Or how berserkers burst ele perpform when the enemy has a warrior and a thief aswell on the lineup. People here are seriously acting over the top about ele but i honestly think theres not muchif anything going on for ele atm.Nothing to stick him out and say "That is why i want him on my team "While i can do that with the toher classes.Its just mediocre and if you go fresh air -zerkers -selfish utilities its a bit better against necro for the tradeoff of nonexistant support..Its not a good build,its just being desparate to fit into this meta

Necros and spirit rangers are currently overpowered. Their buffs don’t need to be reverted, just toned down. And once that happens, eles (and mesmers) will become viable in pvp again.

Against Warriors and Thieves, current ele builds use mist form, lightning flash and arcane shield. I can tell you that arcane shield is a beauty versus them, especially versus thieves. Warriors and thieves also rely on direct damage, which eles can stand against with protection on earth. We also have good access to blind or weakness, depending on our MH choice, weakness toning down their criticals to 1/4 of the damage half the time. Unfortunately, being stuck at melee range is suicide because of the overpowered aoe condition spam which – again, should be nerfed.

Also, keep in mind that an ele is not as much as a 1v1 class as the other two. In a 2v2 situation, for example, an elementalist is pretty good at helping burst down one of them while healing, buffing and cleansing allies. This only gets better with swiftness from the healing glyph and RTL, which allows an elementalist to go from point to point and support their allies whenever they need help.

Also, zerker builds don’t use fresh air anymore. They keep the 20 air, 20 water point allocation as with valkyrie builds. The reason berzerker is used over valkyrie nowadays, is because vitality and higher sustain damage is better versus the defensive-condition meta.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Necros and spirit rangers are currently overpowered. Their buffs don’t need to be reverted, just toned down. And once that happens, eles (and mesmers) will become viable in pvp again.

Against Warriors and Thieves, current ele builds use mist form, lightning flash and arcane shield. I can tell you that arcane shield is a beauty versus them, especially versus thieves. Warriors and thieves also rely on direct damage, which eles can stand against with protection on earth. We also have good access to blind or weakness, depending on our MH choice, weakness toning down their criticals to 1/4 of the damage half the time. Unfortunately, being stuck at melee range is suicide because of the overpowered aoe condition spam which – again, should be nerfed.

Also, keep in mind that an ele is not as much as a 1v1 class as the other two. In a 2v2 situation, for example, an elementalist is pretty good at helping burst down one of them while healing, buffing and cleansing allies. This only gets better with swiftness from the healing glyph and RTL, which allows an elementalist to go from point to point and support their allies whenever they need help.

Also, zerker builds don’t use fresh air anymore. They keep the 20 air, 20 water point allocation as with valkyrie builds. The reason berzerker is used over valkyrie nowadays, is because vitality and higher sustain damage is better versus the defensive-condition meta.

With all due respect, You never answer why any team should bring the elementalist. All you manage to do is simply state that, some builds don’t use a trait that undermines concept of the elementalist AND you also pretty much are saying we should we have to burn all our CD to stay in the fight. Those are all nice things except for the fact you have to wait between 36-80s to get all of your CD back. So what do you do in between those long CD?

Finally, yes guild wars 2 is a team base game 2v2 and not 1v1, it funny how that only seem to matter when talking about the elementalist and not other classes.

can’t wait until this patch comes around
and there will still be “elementalists are fine” posts

to the players that understand how damaged the profession is, just don’t pay much attention to those who don’t.. they wear their blinders 24/7

I wonder if anyone at ANET plays an elementalist now a days? They are a fun class visually, but lack where it really counts, which is mainly in the damage department. Constant nerfs with little compensation has left us at the bottom of the totem poll

red.2387:

Basically, the problem is threefold:

1) Some of the nerfs were never necessary.
2) Most of the other classes have since been buffed.
3) People understand how elementalists work now.

Looks at Mesmer, the last “buff” Mesmers got were to 2 minor skills. that was the first time in ALONG time that they hadnt been nerfed. You can bet the moment that PAX is over (despite not having one Mesmer in it) that Mesmer will be hit hard again with another batch of nerfs.

Already talk of nerfing one of pretty much the only 2 builds that currently work very well (Phantasm) while the other (Shatter) wont be to fair behind once Phantasm has been nerfed, starting with 20% damage reduction across the board for Phantasms

I agree they are a VERY bad state, given time Mesmers will be there once the only builds that work (and forced to use as none other is viable) have been nerfed into the ground.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

red.2387:

Basically, the problem is threefold:

1) Some of the nerfs were never necessary.
2) Most of the other classes have since been buffed.
3) People understand how elementalists work now.

Looks at Mesmer, the last “buff” Mesmers got were to 2 minor skills. that was the first time in ALONG time that they hadnt been nerfed. You can bet the moment that PAX is over (despite not having one Mesmer in it) that Mesmer will be hit hard again with another batch of nerfs.

Already talk of nerfing one of pretty much the only 2 builds that currently work very well (Phantasm) while the other (Shatter) wont be to fair behind once Phantasm has been nerfed, starting with 20% damage reduction across the board for Phantasms

I agree they are a VERY bad state, given time Mesmers will be there once the only builds that work (and forced to use as none other is viable) have been nerfed into the ground.

Except that the mesmer doesn’t have any real problems. The only problem is that the current meta favors condition which will get fixed. elementalist have always been bad except for the cheap bunker crap and nothing more.

Also a lot of classes don’t actually have more than 2 builds.

silvermember.8941:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

red.2387:

Basically, the problem is threefold:

1) Some of the nerfs were never necessary.
2) Most of the other classes have since been buffed.
3) People understand how elementalists work now.

Looks at Mesmer, the last “buff” Mesmers got were to 2 minor skills. that was the first time in ALONG time that they hadnt been nerfed. You can bet the moment that PAX is over (despite not having one Mesmer in it) that Mesmer will be hit hard again with another batch of nerfs.

Already talk of nerfing one of pretty much the only 2 builds that currently work very well (Phantasm) while the other (Shatter) wont be to fair behind once Phantasm has been nerfed, starting with 20% damage reduction across the board for Phantasms

I agree they are a VERY bad state, given time Mesmers will be there once the only builds that work (and forced to use as none other is viable) have been nerfed into the ground.

Except that the mesmer doesn’t have any real problems. The only problem is that the current meta favors condition which will get fixed. elementalist have always been bad except for the cheap bunker crap and nothing more.

“Always” i remember in the BETA and just after they were insane. D/D seems to be loved as well even if i dont like it. You might be there now, Mesmers will be joining you. They don’t have many problems that true other except:

1) a trait tree that is a total mess with traits in the wrong tree, traits that dont work or traits that no one actually wants

2) The fact that people despite the fact they get nerfed pretty much every patch STILL cry for more – an example being the wanted 20% nerf to one of the few viable (except for S/TPvP) builds

Other then damage wise, i would say Ele and Mesmer are quite similar in that Anet doesnt quite know what they want them to be, Mesmer seems to be getting pushed (forced!) towards Interrupt builds which is the EXACT opposite of what happened in GW1 where they started out as Interrupt builds, Anet found out that no one liked them and so had to “buff” change them into more damaging

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

silvermember.8941:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

red.2387:

Basically, the problem is threefold:

1) Some of the nerfs were never necessary.
2) Most of the other classes have since been buffed.
3) People understand how elementalists work now.

Looks at Mesmer, the last “buff” Mesmers got were to 2 minor skills. that was the first time in ALONG time that they hadnt been nerfed. You can bet the moment that PAX is over (despite not having one Mesmer in it) that Mesmer will be hit hard again with another batch of nerfs.

Already talk of nerfing one of pretty much the only 2 builds that currently work very well (Phantasm) while the other (Shatter) wont be to fair behind once Phantasm has been nerfed, starting with 20% damage reduction across the board for Phantasms

I agree they are a VERY bad state, given time Mesmers will be there once the only builds that work (and forced to use as none other is viable) have been nerfed into the ground.

Except that the mesmer doesn’t have any real problems. The only problem is that the current meta favors condition which will get fixed. elementalist have always been bad except for the cheap bunker crap and nothing more.

“Always” i remember in the BETA and just after they were insane. D/D seems to be loved as well even if i dont like it. You might be there now, Mesmers will be joining you. They don’t have many problems that true other except:

1) a trait tree that is a total mess with traits in the wrong tree, traits that dont work or traits that no one actually wants

2) The fact that people despite the fact they get nerfed pretty much every patch STILL cry for more – an example being the wanted 20% nerf to one of the few viable (except for S/TPvP) builds

Other then damage wise, i would say Ele and Mesmer are quite similar in that Anet doesnt quite know what they want them to be, Mesmer seems to be getting pushed (forced!) towards Interrupt builds which is the EXACT opposite of what happened in GW1 where they started out as Interrupt builds, Anet found out that no one liked them and so had to “buff” change them into more damaging

Honestly, I don’t count “BETA” because it lasted only 2 days. So compared that 2 days to the amount of time guild wars 2 has been out.

Actually, the mesmer isn’t in similar situation. Arenanet dug themselves in a hole with the elementalist.

silvermember.8941:

Honestly, I don’t count “BETA” because it lasted only 2 days. So compared that 2 days to the amount of time guild wars 2 has been out.

During BETA and after BETA for a few months at least Ele was VERY strong, of course it got weaker and weaker as time went on but their was a time after its release that Ele was very strong. Now look at it

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

silvermember.8941:

Honestly, I don’t count “BETA” because it lasted only 2 days. So compared that 2 days to the amount of time guild wars 2 has been out.

During BETA and after BETA for a few months at least Ele was VERY strong, of course it got weaker and weaker as time went on but their was a time after its release that Ele was very strong. Now look at it

If you are talking about bunker builds I don’t really consider that strong. Teh bunker was nothing more than a desperate reaction to the fact that we were bad at EVERYTHING else. It was the only build useful in tpvp.

silvermember.8941:

If you are talking about bunker builds I don’t really consider that strong. Teh bunker was nothing more than a desperate reaction to the fact that we were bad at EVERYTHING else. It was the only build useful in tpvp.

No, they were very strong all over. D/D was pretty sick. That was ALONG time ago though The funny thing is that even though they were strong in early release they were EVEN stronger in the BETA they pretty much got nerfed across the board for the release and they were still strong at the start.

Of course, time hasnt been good to them

tPvP is absolutely not about eles doing 1on1 sneaking upon afk fools on far or close.
Please tell me more about the the necros traited for condi and geared with divinity + berserker you fought as a newcomer to soloQ were you get teamed against lvl 1 rangers that use bear and rifle warriors.

I wont ever say ele is underpowered, as it isnt. But in the current meta no decent team will let you pull off that 1 trickpony 1shot you call being skilled.

I f thieves really were the easiest along with necros, then the people you fought did not know anything about tpvp and tried to use their pve builds in tpvp to get their daily achievementpoints.

While d/d bunker is sustainable for a while, again two good players will kill you in 10 seconds. Watch a guardian or an engineer bunkering, read about what a bunker should be able to do and then please state again that d/d ele in the current meta is a good bunker.
After you popped your first stability, the necro attacking that point along with a stunwarrior or an s/d thief will melt you in few cooldowns.
They will fear you out of the point with corrupt boon and spectral wall you away to nirvana while you eat a 5 sec fear and the thief spams larcenous strike for 5k on you.

Come on please, stop talking about a gamemode you know nothing about and played hotjoin or low rank soloQ for a few hours against terribad PvEers.

And I did not even talk about spirit rangers yet…

And right now I miss gw1 and its ability to play cross-region. If you say necros are the easiest profession to dealt with I dare to say you played against bads, real bads. Death shroud + spectral armour and you take 20% of their life force. There’s no lemongrass or other gimmicks like sigil of generosity to help you even a little with typical burst. You also have to stay on the point and eat his spam or you’ll run out of endurance for more dangerous spam. Stop this 1v1 dueling bs, game is more about playing objective.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Thieves and necromancers were still the 2 most easiest profession to defeat just like in wvw.

How many of these were Level 2 or new to SPvP? As i stated in another thread Ele is actually the class i fear the least, no matter how they build unless they get help they wont be killing me. They either run or die as i cant chase them very well -.-

LightningBlaze.4913:

Thieves and necromancers were still the 2 most easiest profession to defeat just like in wvw.

I also played the popular bunker/healer build 0/10/0/30/30 D/D for tpvp and I have to conclude it is still very strong even with all its nerfs. The amount of survivability this build provides within tpvp is still admirable.

See heres the thing..You might be an amazing ele player but you did that while playing wvw so its safe toassume that you are nowhere close in spvp ,rating wise, to face people that know what they are doing with their class.
You simply cant say that thieves and necros are an easy match up for eles.All the top eles have rerolled just because of these 2 classes ! Thats not an opinion,its a fact ..it happened
Was the thief acrobatics s/d? Were the necros 30 20 0 0 20 with spectral armor,spite signet
Its not that i dont believe you can win 1vs1 against necros,thieves but the simple fact you ALSO said that they are your easiest match up makes me very suspicious about the quality of players you faced.Now taking account that you PROBABLY havent invested time in that mode to increase your rank/rating ..i would make the wild guess that you were fighting newbies nowhere near the potential of their class
And the d/d 0 10 0 30 30 is dead.Without the scepters instant burst and range you cant damage back the perma evade theif and cleansing water nerfs (i assume you know in pvp this trait has a 5 sec icd) and sustain nerf(i assume you know about the healing nerf in that mode :P ) means you cant survive the condi aoe spam !
Heres what ele has big trouble 1vs1 (assuming similar skill)
spirit ranger
bombs engi
stun warrior
condi necro
evade thief(easiest 1vs1 in this list imo)
Did you face those builds? Or just random necros,thieves,warriors etc

Avead.5760:

Heres what ele has big trouble 1vs1 (assuming similar skill)
spirit ranger
bombs engi
stun warrior
condi necro
evade thief(easiest 1vs1 in this list imo)
Did you face those builds? Or just random necros,thieves,warriors etc

That for S/TPvP?